Fisherman Pulls Up Beastly Evidence of Early Americans

A flaked blade unearthed from the Chesapeake Bay along with a mastodon skull shows evidence of weathering in open air, then saltwater marshes, and finally the ocean.

Dennis Stanford

Gallery

FacesofOurAncestors

View Caption+#1: Back in the Beginning

To put a human face on our ancestors, scientists from the Senckenberg Research Institute used sophisticated methods to form 27 model heads based on tiny bone fragments, teeth and skulls collected from across the globe.
The heads are on display for the first time together at the Senckenberg Natural History Museum in Frankfurt, Germany.
This model is Sahelanthropus tchadensis, also nicknamed "Toumai," who lived 6.8 million years ago. Parts of its jaw bone and teeth were found nine years ago in the Djurab desert in Chad. It's one of the oldest hominid specimens ever found.

Washington State University; Sven Traenkner (

View Caption+#2: Australopithecus afarensis

With each new discovery, paleoanthropologists have to rewrite the origins of man's ancestors, adding on new branches and tracking when species split.
This model was fashioned from pieces of a skull and jaw found among the remains of 17 pre-humans (nine adults, three adolescents and five children) which were discovered in the Afar Region of Ethiopia in 1975.
The ape-man species, Australopithecus afarensis, is believed to have lived 3.2 million years ago. Several more bones from this species have been found in Ethiopia, including the famed "Lucy," a nearly complete A. afarensis skeleton found in Hadar.

Minnesota State University; Sven Traenkner (c

View Caption+#3: Australopithecus africanus

Meet "Mrs. Ples," the popular nickname for the most complete skull of an Australopithecus africanus, unearthed in Sterkfontein, South Africa in 1947.
It is believed she lived 2.5 million years ago (although the sex of the fossil is not entirely certain).
Crystals found on her skull suggest that she died after falling into a chalk pit, which was later filled with sediment.
A. africanus has long puzzled scientists because of its massive jaws and teeth, but they now believe the species' skull design was optimal for cracking nuts and seeds.

Proceedings of the National Academy of Sci

View Caption+#4: Paranthropus aethiopicus

The skull of this male adult was found on the western shore of Lake Turkana in Kenya in 1985. The shape of the mouth indicates that he had a strong bite and could chew plants.
He is believed to have lived in 2.5 million years ago and is classified as Paranthropus aethiopicus. Much is still unknown about this species because so few reamins of P. aethiopicus have been found.

Smithsonian Museum; Sven Traenkner (c), "Safa

View Caption+#5: Paranthropus boisei

Researchers shaped this skull of "Zinj," found in 1959. The adult male lived 1.8 million years ago in the Olduvai Gorge of Tanzania.
His scientific name is Paranthropus boisei, though he was originally called Zinjanthropus boisei -- hence the nickname.
First discovered by anthropologist Mary Leakey, the well-preserved cranium has a small brain cavity.
He would have eaten seeds, plants and roots which he probably dug with sticks or bones.

Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" (

View Caption+#6: Homo rudolfensis

This model of a sub-human species -- Homo rudolfensis -- was made from bone fragments found in Koobi Fora, Kenya, in 1972.
The adult male is believed to have lived about 1.8 million years ago. He used stone tools and ate meat and plants.
H. Rudolfensis' distinctive features include a flatter, broader face and broader postcanine teeth, with more complex crowns and roots. He is also recognized as having a larger cranium than his contemporaries.

Minnesota State University; Sven Traenkner (c

View Caption+#7: Homo ergaster

The almost perfectly preserved skeleton of the "Turkana Boy" is one of the most spectacular discoveries in paleoanthropology. Judging from his anatomy, scientists believe this Homo ergaster was a tall youth about 13 to 15 years old.
According to research, the boy died beside a shallow river delta, where he was covered by alluvial sediments.
Comparing the shape of the skull and teeth, H. ergaster had a similiar head structure to the Asian Homo erectus.

Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" (

View Caption+#8: Homo heidelbergensis

This adult male, Homo heidelbergensis, was discovered in in Sima de los Huesos, Spain in 1993. Judging by the skull and cranium, scientists believe he probably died from a massive infection that caused a facial deformation.
The model, shown here, does not include the deformity.
This species is believed to be an ancestor of Neanderthals, as seen in the shape of his face.
"Miquelon," the nickname of "Atapuerca 5", lived about 500,000 to 350,000 years ago and fossils of this species have been found in Italy, France and Greece.

Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" (

View Caption+#9: Homo neanderthalensis

The "Old Man of La Chapelle" was recreated from the skull and jaw of a Homo neanderthalensis male found near La Chapelle-aux-Saints, in France in 1908. He lived 56,000 years ago.
His relatively old age, thought to be between 40 to 50 years old, indicates he was well looked after by a clan.
The old man's skeleton indicates he suffered from a number of afflictions, including arthritis, and had numerous broken bones.
Scientists at first did not realize the age and afflicted state of this specimen when he was first discovered. This led them to incorrectly theorize that male Neanderthals were hunched over when they walked.

Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" (

View Caption+#10: Homo floresiensis

The skull and jaw of this female "hobbit" was found in Liang Bua, Flores, Indonesia, in 2003. She was about 1 meter tall (about 3'3") and lived about 18,000 years ago.
The discovery of her species, Homo floresiensis, brought into question the belief that Homo sapiens was the only form of mankind for the past 30,000 years.
Scientists are still debating whether Homo floresiensis was its own species, or merely a group of diseased modern humans. Evidence is mounting that these small beings were, in fact, a distinct human species.

Sven Traenkner (c), "Safari zum Urmenschen" (

View Caption+#11: Homo sapiens

Bones can only tell us so much. Experts often assume or make educated guesses to fill in the gaps in mankind's family tree, and to develop a sense what our ancestors may have looked like.
Judging from skull and mandible fragments found in a cave in Israel in 1969, this young female Homo sapien lived between 100,000 and 90,000 years ago. Her bones indicate she was about 20 years old. Her shattered skull was found among the remains of 20 others in a shallow grave.

A 22,000-year-old mastodon skull and tool dredged from the seafloor in the Chesapeake Bay hints of early settlers in North America.

The two relics, which were pulled up together, may come from a place that hasn't been dry land since 14,000 years ago. If so, the combination of the finds may suggest that people lived in North America, and possibly butchered the mastodon, thousands of years before people from the Clovis culture, who are widely thought to be the first settlers of North America and the ancestors of all living Native Americans.

But that hypothesis is controversial, with one expert saying the finds are too far removed from their original setting to draw any conclusions from them. That's because the bones were found in a setting that makes it tricky for scientists to say with certainty where they originated and how they are related to one another.

But in 1974, a small wooden scallop trawler was dredging the seafloor, about 230 feet (70 meters) below the sea surface and nearly 60 miles (100 kilometers) off the coastline in the Chesapeake Bay.

"They hit a snag, or a hang, as they like to say, which meant that something pretty heavy was in their net," said Dennis Stanford, an archaeologist with the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, D.C., who has analyzed the find.

When they pulled up their net, they found the partial skull of a mastodon, a distant cousin of the woolly mammoth that began its slide into extinction about 12,000 years ago, Stanford said. The fishermen also noticed a flaked blade made of a volcanic rock called rhyolite.

Rediscovered treasure

The fisherman couldn't lug the skull back to shore in their tiny wooden boat, so they sawed off the tusks and teeth, tossed the rest overboard and eventually handed portions to the crew as souvenirs. Capt. Thurston Shawn gave the remaining tusk portions, teeth and knife to a relative, who donated the remains to Gwynn's Island Museum in Virginia. There they sat, unnoticed, for decades.

But while doing his doctoral dissertation, Darrin Lowery, a geologist at the University of Delaware, noticed the teeth and the tusk at the museum, and said, "Ooh, it's something Dennis would be real interested in," Stanford told Live Science. [See Images of the Mastodon Tusk and Tool from the Site]

By measuring the fraction of radioactive carbon isotopes (elements of carbon with different numbers of neutrons), the team found that the mastodon tusk was more than 22,000 years old.

There was no way to date the blade precisely, but the deft flint-knapping technique used to make it was similar to that found in Solutrean tools, which were made in Europe between 22,000 and 17,000 years ago.

Melting glaciers raised sea levels and submerged that area of the continental shelf about 14,000 years ago, so the knife must have been at least that old, Stanford added.

In addition, both pieces showed characteristic weathering that indicated they were exposed to the air for a while and then submerged in a saltwater marsh, before finally being buried in seawater.

That finding suggested that the two artifacts were possibly from the same environment — such as the marshes found between sand dunes that are often set back from the seashore. That would have been a perfect place for mastodons to find food, Stanford said.

"They like to chew on bushes and more rough shrubbery," Stanford said.

To Stanford, Lowery and their colleagues, the discoveries suggest that people lived along the East Coast more than 14,000 years ago — potentially thousands of years before the Clovis culture emerged there. These first American colonizers may have even crossed the Atlantic Ocean from Europe, Stanford said. [Top 10 Mysteries of the First Humans]

Pre-Clovis Americans?

"I think it's very convincing," said Michael B. Collins, an anthropologist at Texas State University in San Marcos, Texas, who was not involved in the current work.

The weathering on both items — first with open air, then saltwater, then seawater exposure — would be almost impossible to get without them having been on land prior to rising sea levels toward the close of the Pleistocene Epoch, which lasted from 1.7 million to 11,700 years ago, Collins said.

But the person who wielded the rhyolite knife may not have hunted the mastodon, Collins said.

"Those things could have come to rest there together at different times," with the tool possibly being 18,000 or 19,000 years old, Collins told Live Science.

A 2007 study in the journal PLOS Genetics tied all living Native American populations to ancestors that crossed the Bering Strait from Siberia. If Europeans did reach the Americas 18,000 years ago, they left little genetic trace in living populations.

"There's absolutely no DNA evidence," Holliday said.

Archaeological evidence is also scarce. A few East Coast sites, such as Cactus Hill in Virginia and Meadowcroft Rockshelter in Pennsylvania, may have been inhabited up to 16,000 to 18,000 years ago, but the dating and provenance of artifacts from the sites are debatable, Holliday said.

Either way, it's impossible to know how the mastodon tusk and knife are connected, Holliday said.

"You would have to demonstrate that the artifact was associated with the mastodon — in the same geologic layers," Holliday said.

But many other fishing boats could have come and mixed up the sediments at the ocean floor prior to the scallop trawler's dredging. And with thousands of years of ocean currents, the artifacts could have originated in different locations. For all anybody knows, an ancient fisherman could have dropped the knife from a canoe 8,000 years ago, Holliday said.

The new discovery was described in May in a chapter of the book "Prehistoric Archaeology on the Continental Shelf" (Springer, 2014), though it has not been published in a peer-reviewed journal.